Tag Archives: change
Communication between communities: are we speaking the same language?
Let’s say I’ve just had a great idea! Even better, let’s say I have done a load of research and now I have some facts and evidence that are really useful. Doing this research has increased my knowledge and now I would like to give that knowledge to you so that you can do your things […]
Development as an emergent property
You don’t get a better explanation on the complexity of development than this video. Make a cup of tea and put your feet up as it is 45 minutes long. But worth every minute. Two things that I love about this video: It sees development not as a series of successes towards a finite end, […]
Once the Capacity Development Initiative is Over: Using communities of practice theory to transform individual into social learning
Capacity development for agricultural research and development is missing an opportunity. Initiatives tend to focus on developing capacity of individuals and even when the ultimate aim is social change leave the transformation of individual into social learning largely to chance. I use the lens of social learning systems, particularly concepts from Community of Practice theory, […]
Achieving change through other people: the laws of physics do not apply.
I have just been in my first days of Outcome Mapping training and very enjoyable it was too. Outcome Mapping was conceived and developed by the Canadian International Development Research Centre and it is: a participatory method for use in planning, monitoring and evaluating a framework for clarifying intent an orientation towards adaptive management and […]
an empathy revolution
Achieving social change is like riding an elephant. Reason is the rider, feelings are the elephant and the change leader (management or whoever) are responsible both for making sure that the path is where the elephant is, and that it is a clear path without scary obstacles. This is the view of this blog post […]
Direction and value
Targets, goals, purpose. They are all ways of describing the direction we are heading. Does it matter which name we give them? Well, yes, I think it does. Target sounds to me like something you do on the way to something else. It is not the overall purpose of your action. System thinkers like to […]
the spaces between the fingers
Gregory Bateson challenged his audience to look at their hand and describe what they could see. They described the fingers, the thumb, palm, the back, hairs on knuckles. “But”, he said, “the most important thing is the spaces between them, the relationships between them which allows them to do all the things they do”. I […]
research, policy and change
I have been thinking a lot—since I work in a pro-development research organization—about how change happens. What brought this on? One thing was a rather unfortunate paper I read on gender and agricultural biodiversity. The author seemed convinced that the recent data (FAO 2011) suggesting that eliminating the gender gap would result in a huge […]
Becoming Better 